After angry drivers protested the initial scoring system that gave priority to underserved communities and deaths involving vulnerable road users, the city council told the Vision Zero program to go back to the drawing board and base the results on unweighted data.

They could have saved time and just asked the city’s bicyclists and pedestrians, and probably come up with the pretty much the same list.

The most deadly corridor identified by transportation officials is a stretch of Imperial Highway between Athens Way and Vermont Avenue in South LA. Here, between 2013 and 2017, more than 21 people were killed or injured per mile of roadway.

The deadliest intersection is where Pacific Coast Highway meets Temescal Canyon Road, at the entrance to Will Rogers State Beach. Nine people were killed or seriously injured there during the same time frame…

The deadliest corridors are overwhelmingly concentrated in central Los Angeles, and they include segments of well-known and well-traveled thoroughfares like Hollywood, Sunset, Beverly, and Pico boulevards. Safety improvements are needed at multiple sections of some major streets, including Western, Normandie, and Vermont avenues.

But you already knew that, right?

Then again, most people could probably name at least 20 of the worst streets off the top of their heads.

Surprising, the story says road diets aren’t off the table, despite our weak-kneed mayor and councilmembers pulling the plug on virtually all of the ones implemented or under consideration over the past year.

Whether they’ll finally find the courage to stand up to impatient, traffic safety denying drivers remains to be seen.

But at least one member of the council gets it.

Talking about the minimal funding LA’s Vision Zero has received to date, with just $37 million allotted in the current budget, CD6 Councilmember Nury Martinez had this to say.

“We at some point need to be very, very serious about this program and committed to funding it—and committed to getting to the communities that have been historically plagued with these accidents,” said Martinez at a committee hearing last month. “If we’re not going to be serious about that, then let’s not kid ourselves.”

If they’re convicted, let’s hope they lock them both up in a deep hole for a very long time.

………

Longtime community advocate George Wolfberg points out that the section of southbound PCH above the parking lot for Will Rogers State Beach is largely unprotected by guard rails or other traffic barriers.

Bike Snob’s Eben Weiss says bicycling is only as dangerous as you make it. While I get the point, I’d say it’s more like bicycling is as dangerous as the roads you ride and the people around you make it, because there’s only so much you can control.

Seattle’s bike-hating shock jock says the city’s reasoning for why bike commuting rates are down is embarrassing, and that the argument that more people will ride if they have a connected network it ludicrous. Maybe he should try driving his car sometime when most of the streets are under construction, making it impossible to find a safe, connected route to his destination, and see how ludicrous that is.

Back in the ’80s when I was driving a conventional cab delivery truck I checked and you could lose a ’78 CVCC in the blind spot on the right front of the truck. I know this because it was my ’78 CVCC I almost hit in the parking lot. The CVCC was the step-up vehicle from the base Civic in 1978.